07 Feb 2006

Fourth Annual Lecture in Informatics at UCC, 20 February

The Fourth Annual Boole Lecture in Informatics takes place on Monday, 20 February 2006 in UCC.  This year's speaker is Professor Alan Bundy, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh who will deliver a lecture titled "A Very Mathematical Dilemma".  

According to Professor Bundy, "Mathematics is facing a dilemma at its heart: the nature of mathematical proof. We have known since Turing showed that mathematical provability was undecidable, that there are theorems with short statements, but with only enormous proofs. Within the last half century we have discovered practical examples of such theorems: the classification of all finite simple groups, the Four Colour Theorem and Kepler's Conjecture. These theorems were only proved with the aid of a computer. But computer proof is very controversial, with many mathematicians refusing to accept a proof that has not been thoroughly checked and understood by a human. The choice seems to be between either abandoning the investigation of theorems with only enormous proofs or changing traditional mathematical practice to include computer-aided proofs. Or is there a way to make large computer proofs more accessible to human mathematicians?"

Professor Bundy has been at the University of Edinburgh since 1971 initially as a research fellow before going on to become professor in 1990. From 1998-2001 he was Head of the newly-formed of Division (subsequently School) of Informatics at Edinburgh.  His research has entailed the building of a number of problem solving programs for different branches of mathematics, namely number theory, algebra, mechanics, ecological modelling and logic/functional programming.

Professor Bundy is the author of a book on the automation of mathematical reasoning, the editor of three books on artificial intelligence and joint author of one book on ecological modelling and one on the social impact of knowledge-based.  He is also the sole or joint author of over 170 published papers and books. In 1986 he received the SPL Insight Award for his contribution to artificial intelligence research and was elected a founding Fellow of AAAI in 1990, a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1996, a founding fellow of AISB in 1997, a founding fellow of ECCAI in 1999, a fellow of the British Computer Society in 2004 and a fellow of the Institute of Electrical Engineers in 2005.

The Annual Boole Lecture Series in Informatics was established and is sponsored by the Boole Centre for Research in Informatics, the Cork Constraint Computation Centre, the Department of Computer Science, and School of Mathematics, Applied Mathematics and Statistics.

The lecture takes place on Monday, 20 February at 8pm in Boole I Lecture Theatre, UCC.  Members of the public are invited to attend and admission is free.  

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